Students' Perceptions of Male Teachers: Effects of Teachers' Dress and Students' Characteristics

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of a male teacher's clothing and selected students' characteristics on students' perceptions of teachers' characteristics. The sample consisted of 152 male and female high school students. Respondents selected one of four photographs of a male teacher model dressed in four different clothing styles for each of 20 teachers' characteristic statements. The mediating effects of students' gender, formality of clothing, and perceptions of the importance of clothing were also investigated. Significant differences among the four clothing styles were found for all 20 statements. Students' gender and rated importance of clothing had some influence on this relationship. The results supplement previous research on female teachers by suggesting that different types of clothing also influence students' perceptions of male teachers and that students' characteristics have some mediating effect.

Clothing and Teacher Credibility: An Application of Expectancy Violations Theory

“…Unlike the results from Butler and Roesel's [30] study, students in this study did not see casually dressed teachers as any more socially attractive than more formally dressed teachers. This may be due in part to business orientation of both the students and class that they were in.…”

“…Butler and Roesel [30] acknowledge that this has the effect of ensuring the perceiver's attention to clothing. However, this method comes at the cost of mundane realism.…”

“…Clothing messages are complex and are combined with a host of other nonverbal and verbal messages [31]. In a realistic setting, additional stimuli may dilute the strength of the clothing cue but would more closely approximate the judgments made of teachers while lecturing in a classroom [30]. As a result, a method utilizing actual teachers similar to that used by Morris et al [32] and Gorham et al [33] in two of their "fashion in the classroom" studies was used.…”

Dress Nicer = Know More? Young Children’s Knowledge Attribution and Selective Learning Based on How Others Dress

“…In general, adults view individuals dressed casually such as wearing jeans and a t-shirt as less knowledgeable than those dressed more formally such as wearing a suit. In contrast, they view more formally dressed individuals as authority figures that resemble teachers and are more knowledgeable [ 21 ]. In addition, women tend to rate individuals in formal business clothing more positively on a range of traits such as intelligence, wealth, likeability, and trustworthiness [ 22 ].…”

“The Clothing Makes the Self” Via Knowledge Activation1

“…The authors found that students judged casually dressed teachers as more approachable, but less knowledgeable than formally dressed teachers. In a follow-up study, Butler and Roesel (1991) found similar results for male teacher models. Lukavsky et al (1995) extended this research, showing that casually dressed teachers were perceived as more approachable and flexible, yet elicited ratings of less respect than formally dressed instructors.…”